동아시아 인문한국학 방법의 모색 ― 한국사 연구에 있어서의 ‘근대’를 중심으로 = IN SEARCH OF METHODS FOR EAST ASIAN KOREANOLOGY STUDIES IN THE HUMANITIES AREA

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In an effort to search for proper methods(and methodologies) that could be applied to East Asian Koreanology studies in the Humanities area, this article concentrates upon examining how the Korean modern historical studies have defined and recognized the concept of 'modernity', ever since the renowned academic argument which suggested the determinative presence of internal developments in Korean history had first been presented by a group of researchers.
After 1945, the theory of the so-called 'Capitalist Buds', which suggested that there had indeed been Capitalist elements budding in the Korean economy and society, and the theory of 'Buds of Bourgeois philosophy', which was suggested in the same vein, both surfaced among scholars and researchers in Japanese and North Korean societies. The intention of the presenters of such theories, were to remedy the damages that had accumulatively been done by the so-called 'Colonial historical studies' and the individuals behind them. And in the meantime, inside South Korea, the so-called 'People Nationalism', or historical studies concentrating upon 'people' issues, were proposed and advocated by scholars like Kim Yong Seob and Gang Man Gil.
Then again, since the 1980s, scholars such as Miyajima Hiroshi and Jo Gyeong Dal have started and continued to criticise the concept of 'modernism' implied in aforementioned theories and studies, which allegedly was basically designed with the Western version of modernity in mind. This kind of attempts eventually led to the beginning of the well-known controversy inside the society of Korean historians, which grew considerably larger during the 1990s among scholars discussing the issue of 'modernization achieved, during the colonial period'.
Yet 'both' of the perspectives mentioned above, were essentially created in the same vein, as they both emphasized the quality of Nationalism, and valued the factor of 'modernity'. Coming into the 21st century, a new theory, critically discussing the 'modernity(or modern facets)' concept itself that reportedly surfaced during the colonial period, entered the academical arena. Through such efforts, it became possible to objectively and critically assess the nature of modernity that existed in the colonial era as well. Now, a perspective that would allow us to critically examine the concept of 'modernity' from the beginning, in a more consistent fashion, should be established in Korean modern historical studies as well.